Poison (44 page)

It was “the product of someone’s imagination” to suggest trained scientists were spreading contaminants around a fridge.

Sukhwinder Dhillon, he said, has “lied to you repeatedly throughout his testimony.” He returned to Dhillon’s relationship with Parvesh, and countered the notion that Dhillon’s actions were explainable in terms of Indian traditions when it comes to marriage after a spouse dies. Culture, Bentham said, is not the point. “Regardless of what culture you are from, I am going to ask you to judge the accused’s conduct based on your own common sense and common human decency.”

Bentham mentioned Dhillon’s double motive, his yearning to have a son and another, younger wife. He spoke of Sarabjit. The defense had argued that Dhillon didn’t need to fly to India just to find sex, that he could have found it in Hamilton.

“I’m going to ask you to assess the likelihood of the accused finding an attractive 21-year-old woman in Hamilton willing to have a relationship with him and, in my submission, his chances were slim to none.”

Bentham had laid out his arguments. Now was the time to shine a light on the path he hoped the jurors would follow. “Let me summarize in the following fashion, members of the jury.” Bentham, the quiet intellectual, now made the leap from rational argument to the emotional, opening his own heart, “Cool Hand Bentham” catching the jury and spectators off guard.

“One of the best measures of any society is the value it places upon human life,” he began. “That is what distinguishes Canada from other countries where life is cheap. In our society, we believe that life is precious. Trials like this one protect our society and preserve those cherished values.”
Unspoken message: This case is about more than a sudden death in Hamilton. Do not shrink from the larger philosophical issue, juror. This is about life—our way of life. Yours, mine, our families.

Bentham looked at his point-form final notes scribbled in pen and stepped out from behind the lectern, facing the jury, as though embracing them.
See me. Hear what I have to say to you.
“I ask you, members of the jury, who carries the torch for Parvesh Dhillon?”
Torch: sudden, active, hot imagery. A gentle, beautiful woman, destroyed. Who picks up the flame for her? What is your answer, juror?

Emotion welled inside Bentham but he kept it at bay. The words went through his head: keep it even. Even but forceful. He was in the moment, with no sense of himself. There was only focus. Bentham posed the question to the jury again. “Who speaks for Parvesh Dhillon, about her life, and about her final moments?”
For she cannot speak. She was silenced when her face froze in the death grin.
“It is not her parents. They are dead. It is certainly not the accused. And sadly, it is not even her two children, who seem to have had their memories of their mother dimmed.” Bentham’s voice was still serious and articulate but jurors, accustomed to his ice-cool manner, could hear the passion in his tone. He paused.

“The answer to the question, members of the jury, is that the truth speaks for Parvesh Dhillon.”
The truth, the truth. The truth speaks for Parvesh Dhillon. That is your answer. You, members of the jury, you speak for her. You are the truth. Tell it.

In his front-row seat behind the Crown’s table, Warren Korol had sat stoically, the blue eyes narrowed with intensity, watching the case of his life being wrapped up in one speech. He was nervous, as if watching his own son give a valedictory address. And now the homicide detective swallowed hard. His eyes became moist. A shiver ran down his back. The truth speaks for Parvesh Dhillon: the line got to Korol, hit right in his soul. He would feel the same emotion years later, whenever he recalled the words. Brent had him with that line. Always would. And now Bentham had the jurors. One of them wiped a tear from her cheek.

“And the truth is that she was a hard-working, quiet, industrious person dedicated to her two children whom she cared for deeply. The truth is that she was coldly murdered by the accused who administered her a fatal dose of strychnine poison. And the truth is that in contrast to the 12 years of her life that she gave the accused, she was murdered by the accused for nothing more than to satisfy his insatiable greed. And therefore, you should find him guilty of the planned and deliberate murder of Parvesh Dhillon. I thank you for your attention.”

Judge Glithero addressed the jury one last time, asked them to retire and render a verdict. The jury of seven women and five men deliberated eight hours but couldn’t reach a decision. They were sequestered overnight at a Kitchener hotel. Bentham, Leitch, Korol, and Dhinsa went for dinner, then gathered in Leitch’s hotel room to watch a movie. There was little to say to one another about the case. They were numb from the trial, tired of speculating what might happen. The game was over. They watched
Enemy at the Gates
, which depicted the bloody battle of Stalingrad. They had grown so close through the journey, they felt like part of a hockey team that had experienced all the ups and downs.

Before turning out the light that night, Korol lay in bed reading.

He flipped the page. Korol was reading a book called
INLA: Deadly Divisions
, an account of terrorism in Ireland. He was taking courses at McMaster University, working toward a bachelor of arts degree. It would be the first university degree in his family. Pursuing higher education later in life gave Korol an appetite for more. Going to school, one night a week in winter, two nights a week in summer, became Korol’s night out, his passion. But on the evening before a possible verdict, he was reading to distract himself. There was so much the jury didn’t know. The jurors will be furious when they learn the whole truth, he reflected. Parvesh, Ranjit, Kushpreet, the twins.

The case had taken so much from him there was nothing left to feel. The anger, the sick feeling in his stomach as Dhillon
lied on the stand, the what-ifs in his head. Dhillon wasn’t just a criminal, wasn’t just cruel and a liar. He was an evil man. Would the jury see the same thing he did? They would need to feel it, to have an instinct for it, because they didn’t know the whole story, not as he did. How could they truly see Dhillon, if they didn’t have the whole picture?

Focus on the page.

It was the epitaph written for a pair of Irishmen murdered in a hotel. Korol grinned. A good line. He turned out the light.

The next morning, Justice C. Stephen Glithero drove 25 minutes from his home in Cambridge to Kitchener. He passed picturesque Galt Country Club, the golf course along the river where he played, drove through the old village of Blair. The sun labored to burn off the early morning mist that drifted over the Grand River. As they had for 10 weeks, Russell Silverstein and his junior counsel Apple Newton-Smith battled traffic on the highway out of Toronto. Korol, Dhinsa, Bentham, and Leitch walked from the Kitchener Sheraton Hotel to court. Glithero entered the courtroom. Everyone rose. The lawyers and clerks bowed. The judge took his seat; everyone in the room followed his lead.

The jury entered. Glithero welcomed them. Once jurors begin deliberation, they only return to court if they have a question or need a clarification. The jurors wanted one more look at a court transcript that focused on the symptoms of Parvesh’s collapse. They wanted to review testimony given by Gurbachan Dhaliwal and her son, Darshan. Both had come to the house and had seen Parvesh in agony. But during the trial, when the Dhaliwals were called as Crown witnesses, both turned hostile on the stand, recanting their recollection of Parvesh Dhillon’s symptoms after her collapse. Tony Leitch had cross-examined them, bringing into evidence their previous statements under oath that pointed to the
strychnine poisoning symptoms Parvesh suffered. Transcripts in hand, the jurors went back to their deliberations.

The four lawyers pushed out from their tables, all trying to resist the temptation to guess what the jury was thinking. Why had they asked that particular question? What could it mean? Bentham, Leitch, Korol, and Dhinsa returned to the hotel to wait. It was all they could do. Wait. The sky was now an expanse of deep blue, the heat climbing by noon. Silverstein and Newton-Smith sat outside the courthouse playing Scrabble on a board laid in front of them on the front steps, shaded by trees, like two kids killing time at recess. They often played Scrabble at times like this, sorting through the jumble of letters to find combinations that made sense. Silverstein usually won. Newton-Smith consoled herself that it didn’t necessarily mean he was a better player. How long has the jury been out now? Is the next minute going to be a good minute, or a bad minute? Hope for the best, she thought. Not guilty. That would be music to her ears. Guilty? It could happen. Be prepared for it.

Back at the Sheraton, Bentham, Leitch, Dhinsa, and Korol played the jury game, too. They knew it was nerve-racking, but they couldn’t help it. They sat in the room, the lawyers in their black vests and matching pants. Korol and Dhinsa’s suit jackets lay neatly folded on the bed. What was the jury thinking? Surely all 12 of them saw through Dhillon. The jury had deliberated for eight hours the day before. They were still at it. It could mean at least one juror is unsure of Dhillon’s guilt. All it takes is one of the 12 to waver. The stakes had been so high and the emotions so pitched that, mid-trial, Bentham’s wife, Rebecca, had given each of them a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same …” She had intended it as inspiration, but the poem is about handling defeat like a man, standing tall no matter what others say. The Dhillon verdict was in such doubt, the poem now seemed useful advice.

Outside the courthouse, Apple Newton-Smith’s cellphone rang.

“Yes?”

“Hello, Miss Newton-Smith,” said the caller. “You are requested back at court, please.”

“Is it a verdict or a question?”

“Verdict.”

Her heart raced. She found Silverstein. The two of them hurried back into the building to their office and retrieved their gowns. Leitch’s cellphone rang, too, the sound instantly putting an end to any conversation in the hotel room. He cradled the phone in his big hand. He said nothing at first. Then he turned to the others.

“It’s in.”

Two words, the last to be spoken among the group for what would seem an eternity. The four men walked briskly out of the room and rode the elevator in silence, said nothing on the way down, then emerged into the heat and sunshine. It was 2 p.m., the middle of the workday in downtown Kitchener, but it seemed as if there was not one car on the street, not one person on the sidewalk. They were oblivious to their surroundings. The sidewalk gleamed white. They all wore dark sunglasses as they marched, two in front, two behind, polished dark shoes clicking on the concrete. They continued the march, briefly along Benton Street and up Frederick Street, past King, Duke, toward Weber. The spire of Trinity United Church poked into the sky in the distance. It was just a five-minute walk but it seemed to take an eternity. The court building came into view. They marched quietly up the hill. Hill? There is a very slight incline along Frederick Street, but for the four men it was now a symbol, the last mountain to climb. The Dhillon case loomed so large in their lives, it occupied their collective psyche. They would all think about it often in years to come, the silent march up the hill. They passed through the yawning courthouse entrance, up the stairs, click-click-click, went through the dark wooden doors, down to the amphitheater floor of the courtroom.